Thunderhead

By Miranda Darling

A black comedy, set in suburbia, about one woman’s struggle to be free.

When Winona Dalloway begins her day — in the peaceful early hours before her children, that ‘tiny tornado of little hands and feet’, wake up — she doesn’t know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed.

On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother: unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices — a mind both wild and precise.

And meanwhile, a storm is brewing …

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribe Publications
• Release date: Apr 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9781761385452

Miranda Darling

Miranda Darling is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Vanishing Pictures. She read English and Modern Languages at Oxford then took a Masters in Strategic Studies and Defence from the ANU (GSSD). She became an adjunct scholar at a public policy think tank, specialising in non-traditional security threats. She has published both fiction and nonfiction; Thunderhead is her fifth book.

Book preview

Contents

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright Page

Epigraph

Dedication

Thunderhead

Acknowledgements

THUNDERHEAD

Miranda Darling is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Vanishing Pictures. She read English and Modern Languages at Oxford, then took a Masters in Strategic Studies and Defence from the ANU (GSSD). She became an adjunct scholar at a public policy think tank, specialising in non-traditional security threats. She has published both fiction and nonfiction; Thunderhead is her fifth book.

Scribe Publications

18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

3754 Pleasant Ave, Suite 100, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55409, USA

Published by Scribe 2024

Copyright © Miranda Darling 2024

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Scribe acknowledges Australia’s First Nations peoples as the traditional owners and custodians of this country, and we pay our respects to their elders, past and present.

978 1 761380 39 6 (Australian edition)

978 1 915590 42 8 (UK edition)

978 1 957363 87 5 (US edition)

978 1 761385 45 2 (ebook)

Catalogue records for this book are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library.

scribepublications.com.au

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The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead

there were little daily miracles, matches struck

unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

For Samson and for Griffin.

It is dawn in the suburbs of the east, and the sky is on fire. It moves from deep blue through purple and into psychedelic pink, fat lozenge clouds hovering low like alien saucers, before bleeding into red, orange, and ending in an inferno of fiery gold. Ablaze, the sky telegraphs a warning, red sky in the morning …

Lying in my bed, I am transfixed. It is impossible, surely, not to believe in Absolutely Everything upon waking to a sky like this: miracles, angels, aliens …

I am trying to ignore my racing heart — far too fast — as though I have woken up mid-sprint. It’s hard to breathe. I can’t get enough air IN.

Look at the glorious sunrise!

I am dizzy now … I lie still and hope it passes.

Distract! Think!

My dreams had been unsettling, come to think of it. Perhaps the warning of the dawn had crept into my sleep and lodged there somehow …

I had been swimming in the sea, underwater. Kicking and drifting, caught in some vast undersea current, invisible, but full of the primal power of the ocean itself. It wasn’t particularly terrifying. I recall more a sense of unending giddiness, of knowing my legs and feet were pointing the wrong way, up towards the sunlight, and my hair streamed out behind me. I kicked downwards. All I needed was motion — to keep moving — to move, to swim, to kick out; motion the panacea, motion the veil. It could perhaps have been a euphoric experience if I had been swimming towards Glory and Infinite Possibility, but even in the deep I knew. I was swimming to escape what I had, swimming to leave it all behind.

I sit up and reach for the blue notebook beside my bed, my pen: my hands shake so much I can’t form the letters; I can’t read what I am trying to write and my saliva tastes metallic. My mandible tingles uncomfortably. My lungs struggle to fill.

Breathe in for four counts, hold for four, out for four, hold for four …

Repeat.

Slow, deliberate pen strokes. Slow, deliberate breathing. This is how you make a list; this is how you make it through.

Up, up, up!

Get up!

These are my stolen hours, the ones I can keep just for me, and they are too precious to spend under the covers. I glance at the large, sleeping mound under the duvet beside me. It snores. I have time — an hour before the Small Ones wake and a tiny tornado of little hands and feet sweeps over me.

I swing long legs from the quilt in a bold, decisive movement that mimics purposefulness — oh cold, rose-scented air! — and place the feet firmly onto the floor. My legs feel as if they are made of wood, so I focus on my feet: my white cotton pyjamas make them look very tanned. I let myself drop gently to the floor and sit, cross-legged, my back leaning against the bed, eyes closed, out of sight. I am thirty-five and still playing hide-and-seek.

I will my heart to slow, my breathing to return … I know I am not dying because this happens a lot.

Collect yourself. Focus on your work. Work is Safe.

I reach — careful, light fingers — up to the bedside table for another notebook, a pink one this time. I keep them in a pile by the bed next to the jar of blown roses, for Thoughts that may eventually, when strung together in some narrative involving yearning bodies and geographical locations, become another book. (I write what my publisher categorises as Romantic Fiction. I prefer to tackle the intricate problems of relationships that I can solve. It’s very reassuring to be able to resettle the upturned order of the world in a few paragraphs. It is a good superpower to have up your sleeve.)

My pen is a Sailor fountain pen and, along with my grandmother’s pearls, my most treasured possession. It never fails to have something to say. This morning it wishes to consider the Anna Karenina Effect.

Some animals cannot be successfully domesticated. Just as all happy families are apparently alike, so are all animals that take to being tamed. A deficiency in even one of the six qualities identified as necessary is enough to render a species ungovernable, impossible to live with; impossible to tame, break, discipline, cultivate, or reclaim. In other words, a single deficiency is enough to keep them wild.

LIST OF QUALITIES FOR FAILED DOMESTICATION

Finicky or picky eaters: for domestication, a species must be easy to feed. Finicky eaters make poor candidates. Non-picky omnivores make the best candidates.

Growth rate: animals that grow too slowly, don’t grow (or even shrink?!) are not feasible.

Captive breeding: the need for privacy, or long-protracted mating rituals such as chases across countries/continents, prevent breeding in a farm-like environment.

Disposition: some species are too ill-tempered to be domesticated. The zebra is of special note: recognised by Europeans in Africa as extremely valuable, it proved impossible to tame. (The characteristics that made the zebra hardy and able to survive in the harsh environment of Africa also made it fiercely independent.)

Tendency to panic: species are genetically predisposed to react to danger differently. A species that bolts is a poor candidate for domestication. A species that freezes, or mingles with the herd for cover in the face of danger, is a good candidate for assimilation.

Social structure: species of lone, independent animals make bad choices for domestication. A species that has a strong, well-defined social hierarchy is more likely to be tamed. A species that can imprint on a single human as the chief of the hierarchy is best. (Different social groups must also be tolerant of one another.)

Perhaps you, Winona, are single-handedly spear-heading the re-wilding of suburbia.

I see myself as a zebra, walking down New South Head Road during rush hour, parting traffic, hardy and independent.

Yes!

The idea pleases me very much.

You embody every deviant characteristic on that list — you do realise …?

This thought is not as pleasing as being the zebra.

Please focus on the work you need to do.

I am trying to resolve a dilemma faced by Nora, the heroine of my latest novel: she yearns for a fulfilling life, one of small satisfactions that run deep, of emotions deeply felt, opportunities seized. She is, however, in a relationship with a man for whom maintaining appearances is paramount. He is dedicated to this maintenance in the way that people dedicate their lives to religion or revolution. Surface is all. She believes she loves this man, but she cannot seem to break through the membrane of his facade to something more real. The situation does not feel bad enough to leave, but neither does it seem entirely satisfactory.

Things have been brought to a head as he has recently, on a trip to Venice, asked her to marry him. Nora is unsure. She has asked him if he is sure … Of